Death in the Baja Read online

  Julia led Billy through the events of this new story twice more, verifying that there was no one lurking around Ted’s house and that he hadn’t seen anyone while walking back to the pub. They left the pub about ten minutes later. “Let’s see what Mr. Ted Blair has to say about this, shall we?” Julia said to Luis when they climbed into the cruiser. “It’s just after ten o’clock. He might even be out of bed by now,” she said with a laugh.

  OVER THE NOISE OF A barking dog inside, Luis banged on the door again. “Police, Señor Blair, open up,” he said in his best English, which was very accented and guttural. Finally, a pair of watery, red eyes and a spray of fuzzy white hair appeared at the window nearest the door. The dog quieted. “What the hell are you doing here at this ungodly hour?” asked a troll-like man as he opened the door.

  Julia and Luis held up their identification while Julia explained they were there regarding his stolen-property case and needed to ask him some questions. The door opened wide abruptly and Ted Blair, wearing a sweat-stained, smelly tank top, boxers, and bare feet, called over his shoulder as he waddled down the hall adding to his troll-like image. “Better come in, then. That’s Jake. He’s friendly,” he said, referring to a large golden retriever beside the door.

  Sitting on stools in a simple kitchen littered with empty beer cans and pizza boxes and smelling of dirty dishes, dirty dog, and body odor, Julia got down to business. “Mr. Blair, the bartender at Polly’s Place tells us he drove you and your RZR home from the pub Sunday night, the night you claim your RZR was stolen. Is that true?” she asked. Jake sauntered into the kitchen and sat beside Julia’s stool. She idly stroked his fluffy yellow head.

  “Hmm,” he said, looking down at the floor as though the answer to that question was somehow hidden among the sand and dog hair. “I don’t rightly remember if that was Sunday or some other night, but if Fred says he drove me home, then he likely did,” mused the old man.

  “I was referring to Billy Williamson, Mr. Blair, not Fred,” Julia said evenly. “Do you remember if that was the case?”

  “Oh, Billy. Yep. He’s a good lad. Pours with a heavy hand,” as if this were the epitome of virtue. “And makes sure I get home some nights. Yep. I do remember now. Was that the night my rig was stolen? You don’t think Billy stole it, do you?” Ted asked as if finally coming out of the fog.

  “I was hoping you might be able to answer those questions for me, Mr. Blair. Do you think Billy stole your RZR?” Julia asked, trying to keep her voice calm and friendly, though she was starting to get exasperated.

  “Naw. Not that young fella. He’s a good kid. He’s driven my rig home plenty of times. Never seemed at all interested in it. I reckon he’s more of a Jeep man, likes solid doors and windows. Me, I like the wind in my hair.”

  Julia’s lips twitched at that image, but she continued. “Was there anyone at the bar that night who did seem interested in your RZR, Mr. Blair?” Julia asked in hopes of moving her inquiry along in the direction of a lead that might be useful.

  “There were so many of them racer fellows at Polly’s after the Two Fifty, but I don’t remember anyone being interested in my little rig. It’s fun in the desert and all, but it’s not in the league of the things those guys race. Nope, I don’t remember anyone even talking about it,” Ted answered, tugging at the waistband of his boxers as though it were digging into his ample belly.

  “Is there anything distinctive about your RZR that will make it stand out from the hundred or so other red RZR Nine Hundreds in this area? Dents, scratches, anything like that?” Julia asked. “Do you have any photos of your RZR? It might help us find it.”

  “Actually, yeah, there is, now you mention it,” Ted answered with a surprised tone in his voice. “It has the shock and strut package, so the shocks and struts are the same color as the seat accents. Mine are orange. Well, all except the driver’s front strut. I buggered it up going over a really big rock, and my mechanic, Ephraim, replaced it with a black one,” he said, pointing to the strut on one of the photos he found for Julia. “It also has a Magellan off-road GPS system and an off-road radio and communication system with headsets for the driver and front seat passenger. It’s a four-seater rig, see, but I mostly don’t have passengers so didn’t get more headsets, and Jake sure doesn’t need one.”

  Julia asked if he had the serial numbers for the GPS and radio. Ted said he’d look for them, though she didn’t hold out much hope. She asked a few more questions but got no new information and so, taking the photo of his rig, finally thanked Ted Blair for his assistance and left.

  As she and Luis walked back to the cruiser, Julia said, “I’ve got to get back in time for desk duty, Luis. Would you please drop me at the station and then go back out to Polly’s. The regulars will be settling in for the day soon. Maybe one of them will remember something useful. Then canvass Campo Cristal to see if anyone remembers seeing anything unusual the night it was stolen.”

  She quickly wrote a few sentences in English on a notepad, reread it for spelling, and handed the torn-out page, along with the photo of Ted’s RZR, to Luis. “If you have any trouble communicating with anyone, just have them read this. If anyone appears to have information, make an appointment with them for us to interview them over the next few days.” There was not a hint of superiority in her voice or expression at his lack of fluency, and Luis took the paper with a slight warming of the animosity he originally felt toward her. She seemed a thorough and talented interviewer and a decent partner. There may well be a reason Julia was a sergeant, and it might not be just because of her grandfather, he thought.

  Chapter 5—March 8, 2018, Desert Southwest of San Amaro

  The sun glinted off the boulders at the end of the canyon in the places where the overhangs more than thirty feet above did not block its intense rays. There were desert verbena and sand lupines everywhere creating a sweet-smelling carpet of purple contrast against the light beige sand and ocher boulders.

  Any amount of water in the desert is transformative. Seeds lie dormant waiting for the loving touch of rain or a splash of water cascading from a natural spring farther up the mountain. The hurricane that came over these same mountains from the Pacific just a few weeks before dropped in ten hours more rain than usually fell in several years. The sleeping seeds awoke to bring vibrantly colored life to this normally monochrome environment.

  When they arrived at the site of the drawings, Rob had handed out his personalized bottles of electrolytes, which had been consumed amid many questions about the contents and specializations he’d made for each of them. Jaime was busy snapping photos with his cell phone, and Rick was trying to find a way to climb up to the overhangs. Simon, Rob, and Molly sat on rocks, their necks crooked upward as they stared at the rock paintings on the underside of the overhanging rocks.

  The drawings were white, black, and red figures of people, deer, lizards, and birds made using paints concocted from plants, charcoal, crushed rock, and ash, possibly as much as 7,000 years ago. How the ancient painters had been able to reach these rocks thirty feet from the arroyo floor seemed miraculous. Some archaeologists posited they had built scaffolds of cactus wood, while others believed the desert floor in this location had eroded as much as thirty feet in the passing millennia. Their reasons for choosing these potentially inaccessible sites, along with who these ancient indigenous peoples were, remain lost to history, though some scholars credit the Guachimi or the Cochimi people for this site. In all, the Baja peninsula is home to over 400 sites of cave and rock paintings and petroglyphs ranging in age from hundreds to many thousands of years.

  Unable to get more than a few feet above the desert floor, Rick returned to where the others sat. He was the first to voice what they were all thinking. “We shouldn’t stay much longer, or Stella will be wondering what’s happened to us. It’s likely another ten degrees hotter back in the parking lot.” They all agreed and quickly gathered their removed outer layers of clothing, grabbed their packs, trash, and water bottles, and
headed back down the path.

  Just over an hour later, Rob, having jogged the last part of the way, was the first to reach the vehicles, calling out, “Hey, Stella, we’re back!” Not getting a response, he whistled and hollered for Juba. As the others neared their vehicles, they could hear his deep bellow as he called Stella’s and Juba’s names. Turning to the now fully assembled group, he asked with a furrowed brow, “Where would she have gone?”

  Simon was the first to respond. “She’s too desert savvy to have gone far. Let’s just split up and keep calling her and Juba. She may be trying to find some shade where there is more of a breeze than here beside the vehicles.”

  Twenty minutes later, however, when no one had spotted any sign of either Stella or her dog, an atmosphere of concern descended on the five friends. Simon’s worry was being expressed as anger. “She knows better than to wander off. What was she thinking? For Chrissake! Why didn’t I just stay with her? This is my fucking fault!” He was not addressing anyone but himself, and the others gave him space while he blew off some of his anxiety. They were all feeling it.

  As Simon started winding down his self-abuse, Jaime took command of the situation, asking, “Do any of you have flares or any other signaling devices in your rigs? I think we need to do a proper search of areas on both sides of the path toward the rock paintings, and the track coming into where we parked.” Seeing only shaking heads at the flare question, he went on. “Okay, we’ll go out in two teams, then. Since we don’t have flares, let’s meet back here in an hour. Rick and Molly, let us three go back up the path and see if she ended up waiting in the shade somewhere on her walk back to the rigs. Perhaps she was sleeping and didn’t hear us. Rob and Simon, you head up the route we took to drive here and see if you can see any signs of her or Juba. The sand is very soft, so maybe you can see some tracks or something. Let’s not lose sight of our team members and don’t forget your water. We’ll find her.”

  Chapter 6—March 8, 2018, San Amaro

  It was getting close to quitting time. Julia’s replacement on desk duty had not yet arrived for work when five gringos pushed through the front door of the police station. They looked upset, hot, and dusty as all five approached the desk together. One of the men, with longish silver hair, was the first to speak in halting Spanish, asking Julia if she spoke English.

  “Yes, sir. How can I help you?” Julia responded in excellent English.

  With obvious relief, Simon began, “We need to report a missing person. I’m Simon Wakefield, and my wife, Stella Monroe, is lost in the desert out by the rock paintings in Cañon Del Demonio.” His words poured out like a gushing faucet, but before he could continue, Julia deftly and calmly stopped the flow of his story. “Before you proceed with your account of what happened to your wife, let me gather some details about you and her, so I can start the computer case file. That will speed things up. Then we’ll all go into a quiet room, and you can tell me the whole situation.”

  Julia’s first-rate command of English and her calm, strong demeanor seemed to cause the man before her and the group with him to visibly relax a degree or two. She led the husband through the demographic data gathering of his and his wife’s names, their address in San Amaro, and the time and location where she was last seen. By this time, the evening desk sergeant had arrived to start his shift, and Julia moved the group into an interview room. They spent over an hour there going over all the details of the morning’s hike, Stella’s separation from the group, and all the actions they had taken in their search to find her when she wasn’t in the parking lot as expected.

  She videotaped the interview with their permission, because, as she explained to them, the detective assigned to the case might not be fluent in English. Being able to put Spanish subtitles on the video would help him more quickly get up to speed. They all signed the video waiver with no questions asked.

  The five hikers provided Julia with a description of their trip to the location from which they began their hike up the canyon to the rock paintings. Each member of the group added details they thought were important. Julia asked probing questions when she was unclear and as the story emerged through the interview. A couple of the Americans showed her photos on their phones to better inform Julia of the story. She had several of the photos emailed from the hiker’s phones to her work email.

  Before she sent the five home, Julia let them know that, once assigned, the detective for their case would be contacting Simon. She reassured them it would be soon. Even though it was now nearly an hour and a half past the end of her shift, she settled at her desk to translate the statements the group had made into Spanish and add Spanish subtitles to the video. Translation software for written and spoken words made the process less tedious.

  After two hours, she had read the translation through several times and was happy that both it and the subtitles were accurate and clear. She had also printed several photos from the hiker’s phones. She took the file folder containing all the statements, photos, and a thumb drive containing the video to the evening desk sergeant who was responsible for contacting the brass to find out whom they wished to assign as lead on this new case.

  With the formalities of statements completed, she headed home. Her thoughts shifted to the humanity of the situation. A woman, dressed and prepared for a morning hike in the desert, was most likely lost, disoriented from a day in the desert heat, hungry and afraid, trying to find a safe place to spend the night. Or perhaps she was lying hurt and unable to move in the boulders along the arroyo. Whatever her situation, Julia sent a quick prayer to San Cristo, Saint Christopher, that the missing woman and her dog be kept from harm through the night.

  JULIA LIVED IN A SMALL casita behind her abuelos’, grandparents’, house. Their house was located on a large lot on the hillside west of the center of town. It had a view of the Bay of San Amaro, where open wooden or fiberglass fishing boats, called pangas, could still be seen on the beach along the Malecon. Julia’s casita was a small self-contained cabin located on the same lot and originally built by Julia’s parents shortly after they were married. After Julia was born, they had moved to another, larger house closer to the edge of town. She and her mother had moved back into the casita when Julia’s much-loved father had been killed in a traffic accident in Mexicali when Julia was fourteen. It was a traumatic event in her young life made more so by Julia’s cool relationship with her mother and the impressionability of a girl of her age. His death left scars on her psyche that remained. Julia’s mother had remarried when Julia was finishing her master’s degree in criminology in Arizona and had moved into her new husband’s home. The casita was Julia’s alone now.

  The small house, the interior of which Julia had painted a cheery golden orange, consisted of a small bedroom with an armoire in place of a closet and dresser, a very modest bathroom with a sink, toilet, and small tiled shower area, and one other larger room comprising kitchen, dining, and living areas. It was less than 500 square feet in total. There were two stools against one side of the freestanding kitchen counter acting as the dining area. Opposite that against the wall were a two-burner stove, half-sized fridge, and a sink. The only other pieces of furniture were a shabby two-seater sofa over which Julia had thrown a brightly colored woven Mexican blanket to hide the tears in the cushions and a home-made wooden side table constructed by her father over thirty years before. It was one of the few things of her father’s she had, and it was precious to her. The casita was as neat and tidy as it was small and humble.

  She had just toweled off after a shower when her cell phone rang. Ten forty-five. It had to be work, though she didn’t recognize the number. None of her friends would phone this late on a work night.

  “Bueno,” she answered, using the typical Spanish phone greeting.

  “Sergeant Garcia, this is Hector Martinez Ortega.” Julia’s eyebrows shot up and she stood at attention, smiling inwardly at her reaction. Martinez was a well-respected detective inspector in San Amaro—“Hector the Inspect
or,” people called him—and someone her grandfather spoke of with high regard.

  “Yes, Inspector,” she said with an aura of excitement tingling up her spine.

  “I have been assigned the missing person case you took at the end of your shift today. I have reviewed the interview footage and transcripts you prepared. I appreciate that you spent the time to translate everything before leaving tonight. It helped me greatly.” He paused briefly before speaking again. “You have been assigned to this case, to work with me as a liaison with the Americans. Sergeant Hernandez is also on the team, and I want the three of us out at the site where she disappeared at first light tomorrow. We will meet at the station at four thirty in the morning for a briefing, and then we’ll head out. Be prepared for a day in the desert,” Martinez admonished and then hung up.

  Julia, excited but not completely surprised to be included, began gathering provisions for the day. She would need ample water, food, sturdy boots, warm jacket, short-sleeved uniform, and a good hat.

  In the eyes of the male hierarchy in the San Amaro Police force, being fluent in English was one of Julia’s main attributes. It brought her into important cases involving the English-speaking residents and visitors to San Amaro. She was incredibly grateful she had taken her graduate studies in the States instead of going to Mexico City, as her mother desired. She had studied English throughout public school, but it was her grandfather who had encouraged her to spend time studying in the US to be forced into fluency. That encouragement prompted her to explore scholarships to American universities, and her scholastic abilities had won her a full ride to Arizona State University. The fact that her father’s brother and his family lived in Phoenix, and could provide her with a bedroom, was the final piece giving her the ability to spend two years at Arizona State completing her graduate-level criminology degree.